KEO films, The Garden pick up RTS honors

The Royal Television Society (RTS) Programme Awards were handed out in London last night, with double winner KEO films recognized for BBC2′s <i>Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die</I> and C4′s <I>Hugh’s Big Fish Fight</I>. (pictured, Terry Pratchett).

Its The Experiments was named the top winner in the entertainment category. Of the Objective Productions four-part series , the jury called it “quite simply water cooler television. Innovative, original, intelligent with a startling level of profundity.”

The presenter award went to The Choir: Military Wives host Gareth Malone, for the Twenty Twenty for BBC2 series. “His enthusiasm and expertise infects everyone around him and the on-screen result is thoroughly positive and life enhancing. This year he took his students and his performance to a new level and together they captured the nation’s imagination,” said the jury.

TwoFour’s Graffiti Wars, another Channel 4 series, picked up the arts award, with the jury remarking on its “extraordinary portrayal of the ruthless world of the graffiti artists.”

KEO films took the single documentary category for BBC2′s Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die, dubbed “groundbreaking, revelatory and profoundly moving,” by the jury; and 24 Hours in A&E from The Garden Productions for Channel 4 took the documentary series category, for being “uplifting and heart-warming: love, life and death up-close and raw.”

Windfall Films’ Channel 4 one-off Dambusters: Building the Bouncing Bomb won in the history category, while Blink Film & Television’s Channel 4 special Mummifying Alan: Egypt’s Last Secret took the science and natural history prize.

The last non-fiction prize went to KEO films’ C4 series Hugh’s Big Fish Fight for the popular factual and features category, dubbed “an interesting, watchable and accessible series of clever and effortless campaigning” by the jury.

The Lifetime Achievement Award, meanwhile, went to Hartswood Films founder Beryl Vertue, who has been responsible for documentary series The War Behind the Wire and Officers and Gentlemen as well as scripted series Sherlock Holmes, Coupling and Doctor Who.